Coalition Cannot Leave Job Unfinished in Iraq The House fulfills its obligation by passing supplemental, but coalition cannot exit until it has successfully completed its work Washington, Oct 31, 2003 - A U.S.-led coalition has liberated Iraq and started the country on a path toward an independent government representative of its people, but the job is only half complete. The coalition still needs to secure and stabilize the country before transferring control to the Iraqi people so that this chapter in the global war on terror can be closed successfully. The House has done its part by passing a supplemental appropriations bill to support ongoing military operations and assist the Iraqi people in the reconstruction of their country. Additionally, a recent donor conference in Madrid brought together more than 70 nations to pledge future contributions to this effort. The funding will allow the coalition to help rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, transfer control to a sovereign Iraqi government and begin implementing plans to bring troops home and replace them with an independent Iraqi security force as quickly as possible. Coalition forces will continue to experience setbacks by terrorists, but those who question whether liberating Iraq was necessary need look no further than the report released by Dr. David Kay of the Iraqi Survey Group (ISG). The report unequivocally confirmed that Saddam’s regime maintained dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment concealed from the United Nations during inspections that began in 2002. The report affirms Iraq’s material breach of all U.N. Security Council resolutions passed over 12 years. Among the findings implicating Saddam were a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses within the direction of the Iraqi Intelligence Service (ISS) and a prison laboratory complex possibly used for biological weapons testing on humans. Reference strains of organisms suitable for biological weapons (BW) programs were found in the homes of scientists. New research on BW-applicable agents Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever and continuing work on the chemical agents ricin and aflatoxin were also discovered and never declared to the United Nations. The ISG may not have reported uncovering a “smoking gun,” but to put its efforts into perspective, consider that one gram of dried anthrax spores contains about 10 million lethal doses. In a country the size of California that contains 22 million people, the ISG is looking for a gram of anthrax that could easily be stored in a vial and hidden in a shoebox. Saddam beyond any doubt possessed such weapons; their documentation transcends more than three U.S. administrations certain of this fact. “Think how many can be killed by just a tiny bit of anthrax, and think about how it’s not just that Saddam Hussein might put it on a Scud missile, an anthrax head, and send it on to some city he wants to destroy. Think about all the other terrorists and other bad actors who could just parade through Baghdad and pick up their stores. …This is a very serious thing with me, this is a very serious thing. You imagine the capacity of these tiny amounts of biological agents to cause great harm; it’s something we need to get after.” President Clinton, Jan. 21, 1998 There is also no disputing that Saddam’s regime provided training and financial support to terrorists who would gladly make use of such weapons and who would target the United States and its allies. Terrorist organizations including the Arab Liberation Front, the Palestine Islamic Jihad, the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) and the Abu Nidal Organization have all maintained Baghdad offices. It is these elements, along with Ba’ath party loyalists and terrorists infiltrating from other countries that are behind recent attacks against Iraqis and coalition troops. Despite the obstacles, the coalition is making steady progress. Among its many achievements, an independent Iraqi Central Bank has been established and a new currency distributed. Some 5,000 small businesses have been opened since the liberation and foreign banks have been competing to get into Iraq. Virtually all major hospitals and universities have been re-opened, and hundreds of schools – until a few months ago used as weapons caches – have been rebuilt and made ready for the start of the fall semester. The process will not be completed overnight, but in the meantime Iraqis no longer need to fear the torturing of political dissidents or the systematic slaughtering of people that is documented by Saddam’s mass graves and torture chambers – according to Human Rights Watch International, up to 290,000 people have “disappeared” in Iraq during Saddam’s presidency that began on July 16, 1979. To leave prematurely would only set the country up for failure and create a haven for terrorists to re-group, re-arm and attack again. The coalition needs to complete its work so that Iraq is never again a source of terror and a threat to the rest of the world. The national security of the American people depends upon it. U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland, is a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and has conducted two congressional oversight missions to Iraq http://hoekstra.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=19321
